NEWS
Follow UsFormer India opener Robin Uthappa held modern-day great Virat Kohli responsible for the premature end of the career of one of India’s greatest limited overs all-round options, Yuvraj Singh.
“Virat’s style of leadership was not inclusive. It was rather very exclusive. I haven’t played under Virat very much, but he is a very very different captain. He was very ‘my way or the highway’," Uthappa sketched about Kohli's captaincy during an interview with The Lallantop.
After stating how hard a taskmaster Kohli was as a captain, Uthappa gave the example of how Yuvraj’s second coming into the Indian team could not be prolonged as he was unable to match the high standards set by Kohli in terms of fitness.
“Take Yuvi (Yuvraj Singh) Pa’s instance. The man beat cancer and he is trying to come back to the international side. He’s a man who’s won us a World Cup, two in fact with others playing an integral role as well. Then you tell such a player, as the captain, that his lung capacity has diminished," narrated the 39-year-old.
“I understand, there are standards to maintain. But for every standard, there is an exception. Here’s a man who deserves to be an exception, because he’s not just a man who has won you tournaments but also someone who’s beaten cancer, the hardest challenge in life in a sense.
"How about some cushion room for someone like that? At that time, Virat did not give him that leeway,” pointed out Uthappa, who played with Kohli for the Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB) in the initial years of the Indian Premier League (IPL).
Post getting treated for cancer, Yuvraj was not the same player he once was. While he played 24 T20Is after returning, he managed to score only 309 runs at an average of 19.3 and a strike rate of 104.4. It was the same period in which he played one of the slowest knocks of his career, in the final of the 2014 T20 World Cup which India lost.
In ODIs too, Yuvraj tried hard to make a comeback in 2017 on the back of a great 2015 season in domestic cricket where he averaged nearly 70 in six matches.
However, in international cricket, despite hitting a century (150 vs England) and a fifty and averaging more than 40 in 11 matches, Yuvraj never played after the 2017 season which also saw India lose the Champions Trophy to Pakistan.
Explaining what Yuvraj went through during the training, Uthappa, who also played eight ODIs and two T20Is between 2014 and 2017, said, “He was told to do the fitness test, and even his request to drop the levels by two points due to his state of being was denied.
"Yuvraj took on the challenge and said that he would do the test without the deductions. Because he wanted to be a part of the team again. Then, he passed the fitness test, came into the team and after one lean tournament, he was removed completely.”
“After that, the entire leadership group did not entertain the thought of bringing Yuvi back. Virat was the leader now, and it went according to his words because he is such a powerful presence,” Uthappa added.
